This image shows only the swells directed at Naval Jetties that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical March. It is based on 2964 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs.

The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NW. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 18% of the time, equivalent to 6 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to happen in a normal March but 5% of the time you can expect swell in the range 1.3-2m (4-6.5ft) 5%, equivalent to (2 days). Taking into account the ratio of these swells that coincided with predicted offshore winds, and given the fact that Naval Jetties is exposed to open water swells, we think that that clean surf can be found at Naval Jetties about 18% of the time and that surf is blown out by onshore wind 21% of the time. This is means that we expect 12 days with waves in a typical March, of which 6 days should be clean enough to surf.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.